Have you ever noticed the premium that we place on things that are "pure"?

For example, bottled water runs roughly 100 times what tap water costs.  And yet, we will buy it in bulk quantities without the slightest hesitation.  Why?  Because we believe that bottled water is pure and our tap water is impure.

Or take, for instance, the organic food boom.  Shoppers have helped to pad organic food sales by nearly 140 percent since 2003 and have turned it into a 7 billion dollar a year industry.  Why?  Because once again, we believe organic foods possess more purity than non-organic foods.

It’s all about purity these days, whether we’re talking about our dish soap, our deodorant, our medicine, or even our pet food!  We associate pure as being better for our bodies and our environment...and we’ll pay a premium to make sure we get it.    

But as noble a cause as all this may be, every single one of those things is perishable.  In fact, everything on the planet is perishable with the exception of one thing...the human soul.  The Bible tells us that one day, the earth and all it's contents will perish and fade from existence (2 Peter 3:12), while also declaring that every person's soul will exist eternally (John 3:36). 

So the question has to be asked..."Do we put the same purity-priority on the things that last forever that we place on the things that don't last forever?"  What are we more concerned about, our diets, our dying bodies, our environment, or the one thing that we're actually going to take out of this world?  The answer is obvious.  People's priority should be purity of soul, and that only happens through a steady diet of obedience to God's standard for our lives.  And that standard doesn't include sexual activity outside of marriage.

We have our bottled water, we have our organic fruits and vegetables, we even make sure our pets are eating right.  But none of this matters in the long run if we're impure in the area of our existence that matters most?  It makes no sense. It's like fighting over the best deck chair on the Titanic.

Let's be smarter than that.  Let’s live the way God designed and intended us to live.  Let’s be pure when it comes to that part of that’s going to endure to the end.    

1 Corinthians 6:13 (New Living Translation)

"Food was made for the stomach, and the stomach for food." (This is true, though someday God will do away with both of them.) But you can’t say that our bodies were made for sexual immorality. They were made for the Lord, and the Lord cares about our bodies.